Chapter 1
Some people sayintsalove can strike anywhere. At any time.
A sensible woman doesn’t believe in such things.
No. A sensible woman believes love at first sight carries roughly the same stigma as licking your own elbow. It’s impossible, it justdoes nothappen. It’s only one of those things that happen in the meet-cute scenes of romantic comedies, or written within the first three chapters of a romance novel. Sensible women will never accept the credibility of it. And a sensible, reasonable woman would not think it fitting to shove three fully loaded stadium stand hot dogs in her mouth in the same vicinity as all her male colleagues either.
It seemsI am not in any way a sensible woman.
I don’t even have the sense to pay attention to anything around me. Well, just my hotdog, that’s about it. Currently, I’m licking the remains of what’s left of its deliciousness from my fingers and contemplating how horribly I’ll be teased tomorrow if I go for my fourth one.
Maybe I should just pretend I have to leave and get another dirty water dog on the way out. These guys won’t even notice I’m gone. No, not true. Dex would, that knuckle-dragger. He wouldn’t know exactly when I left, but I’d put money on the fact he knows precisely how many hotdogs I just scarfed down and is going to bring it up in the most perfectly embarrassing moment in the near future—like at an important work meeting. Ugh, I despise him.
And I hate having to sit here next to him.
I mean, I didn’t even want to come. I literally said it ten times in the office today. My boss, editor-in-chief atUPCLOSEmagazine, the unapologetic tyrant Gail Talbert, told me if I didn’t go, my next article would be titledUPCLOSE and Personal:Easy Fixes for Freaky Vagina Issues. So, I wasn’t in the best of moods when we got here. And everyone has just been ignoring me since.
Typical day for me, actually.
I pull out my phone and snap a picture for a quick post on social media. Gail will kill me if I don’t; she wants us constantly marketing the magazine.
We’re at Citi Field, the guys are on their sixth round of beers, and there’s a perfect blue sky above us. I snap a few more pictures and post them over all social media outlets and add the captionMajor League Fun,#HotDogsAndBalls. We occupy the entire section, but the group of seats to my right that were empty two hotdogs ago are now being filled with guys trying to get closer to the field. It’s a pretty big game.
I respect their boldness.
Honestly, it’s one of the first big games of the year and the team I’m supposed to be rooting for is winning. I think.
Suddenly the crowded stadium goes wild. Something is happening that’s making everyone cheer. My eyes catch on the giant screen across the field from us, the one that’s supposed to show replays of the game. Instead, it was giving us a pornographic rendition of a couple actually making it to second base. The crowd roars.
It’s the Kiss Cam.
The scene cuts to another couple getting closer to home base. The crowd stomps their feet now and I swear the entire stadium shakes. Even the team mascot gets involved and does a perverted little dance next to the couple.
The next shot is a proposal with a ring that blinds half of the crowd, and a cheer deafens the rest of us.
I sit on the edge of my seat watching. It’s pornand romance.
“Oh damn, look at her face, this isn’t going to end well,” a deep voice next to me says.
The guy is right. The woman on the screen’s face turns bright red. She looks somewhere in between appalled and stunned stupid, and a lot like she’s about to vomit. She covers her mouth with her hand and dry heaves. The camera zooms in. The man next to me is loudly talking to his friends. “I think she’s about to throw up, definitely not a good sign. Jesus, I’d hate to be that guy.”
Jeez, he’s totally right. Oh my God, I can’t look anymore. Why are they still zooming in on the poor girl’s face? And how could she say no to him in front of everybody?
The camera zooms in even closer, and I grip onto the armrests of my seat, waiting for the outcome. But my armrest moves and grunts out a slur of swear words that any sensible woman would try not to repeat. Startled, I turn and look at the man whose arm my nails are digging into.
“Oh God, I’m so sor—” I lose all train of thought and normal speech abilities.
He turns his head to face me and does this weird sort of double take and blinks a few times.
Dark hair. Hazel eyes. The bristle of a five o’clock shadow growing in.
I can’t look away.
I would literally rather die than stop my eyeballs from feasting on this perfect specimen of man. He’s beautiful. Utterly, breathtakingly gorgeous.But there’s more. It’s the way he’s looking back at me with huge rounded eyes and a crooked knowing smile. Like both of us were just tackled by Cupid himself. The rest of the world just fades away.
How many times have I heard some crazy story like this?Love at first sight. It feels exactly how they say it does. My heart pounds, my knees tingle and go weak, but I’m calm, open, and everything I ever felt missing from my life seems to fall into place.
Some sort of metaphorical bolt of lightning crackles between us, splitting us open and pouring us into each other. Like his very soul jumps out of his body and settles itself around mine, and he’s never going to let me go. It’s a realization you don’t belong to yourself any longer, you’re now a part of this other person, this integral part, and you can’t break away from it. You can’t breathe without it. It’s too powerful, too profound. It’s intense and breathtaking, it’s fucking soul-wrenching.
